Public schools in Gauteng, are your admissions policies up to date?

The 2019 school year is already underway and this week the admissions application process opened for 2020. If you run a school that is preparing to review its next set of young applicants, you need to ensure that you are fully up to date with the Gauteng Department of Basic Education’s new admission policies.

In particular, you should be aware that recent changes have been made regarding the province’s feeder zone regulations, with the radius of these zones extended from 5km to 30km. Are your school’s 2020 policies compliant?

Edwell Gumbo, the GM of Teach360

Until recently, public school
policies mandated that schools prioritise applicants living or working within a
5km radius of their schools. This diminished the chances of children living
further away from better-resourced schools from being admitted to these
schools.

But for the last 18 months, Gauteng
MEC of Education Panyaza Lesufi has been acting on a 2016 Constitutional Court
ruling to address these issues. Lesufi has done this, and in November 2018 new
regulations regarding the province’s feeder zones were officially gazetted.

“Feeder zone determination plays a
significant role in ensuring that access to our schools is fair, transparent
and conducted in an equitable manner,” Lesufi said.

The new system gives learners
who apply to the school closest to them preferential rights but, if the school
is full, they can now apply to any school within a 30km radius of where they
live or work. Learners who have siblings at the school they are applying to are
also given priority.

Other admissions rules have been
under the spotlight, too, with Lesufi calling for reform in regulations that
potentially discriminate against learners based on their race, ethnicity,
language, age, religion, sexual orientation, HIV status and other criteria.

Assessing your school’s compliance

As a public school in Gauteng, it’s
critical that you are compliant with these new legislated changes, but
assessing all of your school’s policies can be a confusing and time-consuming
process.

Fortunately, there are resources
available to help you, such as Teach360, an education solutions provider that
developed a number of school policies addressing most of the needs of
schools. These policies are
comprehensive enough to cover the pertinent components that schools need to
manage, but you can even adapt or tailor them according to your school’s
specific needs.

Teach360’s school policies are fully compliant with
the most recent legal and regulatory requirements and cover matters such as
learner discipline, language, religion, human rights, HIV/AIDS and
time-scheduling.

These policies have been drafted by
one of South Africa’s top education law professors and endorsed by
international specialists in the field.

“We recognise that schools have to
have clear and comprehensive policies in place in order to operate effectively
and be compliant with the law,” says Edwell Gumbo, GM for Teach360. “Our
products simplify this process by providing all the access to information and
tools that schools need.”

The new school feeder zones
will be revised at least every three years, or whenever a new school opens in
an area. Ensuring that your policies are up to date and legally complaint will
minimise any disruptions these changes cause so that you can get on with the
task of educating South Africa’s young minds.

About Teach360

Teach360, which forms part of the FutureLearn Group, develops
comprehensive and efficient CAPS-aligned teacher resources in the form of
Teacher Files that meet classroom and administrative needs and School Policies
drafted based on legal and regulatory requirements. Teach360 also provides a
full set of educational resources and learning materials that include the likes
of CAMI and Quanta.